Sanders campaign planning for contested convention

Bernie Sanders will surpass Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates and emerge as the nominee at a contested convention, his campaign said Tuesday.

Sanders has vowed to win Wisconsin, New York and, ultimately, the nomination, but his campaign is pushing back on the notion that either state is a must-win. The Vermont senator holds a narrow lead over Clinton in Wisconsin, according to a RealClearPolitics average of state polls, but trails her by 11 percentage points in New York.

“We’ve mapped out a path to victory in our campaign in terms of delegates — pledged delegates — and we don’t have to win everywhere, but we do have to win most of the states coming up,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told MSNBC on Tuesday. “So there’s no one state that’s a must-win, and as we look forward we’re gonna be able to accumulate the delegates we need to get the pledged delegate lead by the end of this primary and caucus process.”

Clinton has a 263-pledged-delegate lead over Sanders. But factoring in superdelegates, who are free to support any candidate at the Democratic convention, Clinton’s advantage surges by 438 delegates. The Sanders campaign has maintained that superdelegates should shift their support to match the popular vote and rejected the “funny math” that suggests Sanders can’t win.

“He is winning by these gigantic margins, and that’s gonna allow him to catch up to the secretary,” Weaver said on CNN’s “New Day.”

Weaver said it’s highly unlikely either candidate will garner 2,383 pledged delegates to win the nomination. Superdelegates “don’t count until they vote, and they don’t vote until we get to the convention,” Weaver argued. “So when we arrive at the convention, it will be an open convention, likely with neither candidate having a majority of pledged delegates. So I think it’ll be an interesting Democratic convention.”

But Sanders isn’t looking to go to Philadelphia just to make a splash. “What this campaign is looking for, and what the senator is looking for, is going into the convention and coming out with the nomination,” Weaver said.

Sanders’ campalso challenged Clinton’s electability, calling into question whether she can rally support from Democrats and independents backing Sanders.

“[If] Bernie Sanders is the nominee, he will get the over, over, overwhelming support of Democrats in this race. The question is who can capture and mobilize young people and independents in this race to bring them out and to have them vote in the general election so that we can elect not just Bernie Sanders but Democrats up and down the ballot,” Weaver said. “Hillary Clinton is not gonna do that. All these young people who are coming out for Bernie Sanders, are they gonna come out for Hillary Clinton? I’m not so confident about that given how many times she’s dissed them recently.”

Clinton’s campaign pushed back on the idea that Sanders has any plausible path to victory, insisting there are enough pledged delegates left for someone to win the nomination before the convention.

“There are three very delegate-rich states coming up — Pennsylvania, New York and then California. I think there are plenty of delegates for one candidate to get a majority of the pledged delegates,” campaign manager Robby Mook told CNN.

“There’s some simple mathematical facts here, and the Sanders campaign can’t explain how they will get the delegates to win,” he added.

Mook also slammed Sanders’ strategy, suggesting his ploy to sway superdelegates and win over delegates in past caucuses like Nevada is a plan that doesn’t reflect the will of Democratic voters.

“That’s not fighting for votes. That’s not getting the majority of the voters,” Mook argued. “That’s just trying to work the math, and it doesn’t work. They haven’t been able to prove a path.”